


Honored to be Plundered

by scarredsodeep



Series: The Golden Age of Piracy [1]
Category: AFI
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Historical, M/M, Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-19
Updated: 2007-10-19
Packaged: 2018-03-04 22:58:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3095711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep/pseuds/scarredsodeep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The most fearsome pirate in the Spanish Main is notorious for plaguing merchant ships and leaving no survivors. But, as the son of Sir Puget is about to learn, even the ruthless Captain Carson makes exceptions…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honored to be Plundered

The young merchant’s son pressed his slight body to the mast of his father’s ship, shivering in the trade winds. The horizon was grey and shrouded in mist. Squinting, he thought he made out another dark shape in the thickening fog. It was hard to tell—after so many weeks being alone at sea, it was too easy to summon dreams into what seemed to be reality.

For a moment, he let himself hope. Maybe, at long last, it was land.

He strained his ears against the muted call of the sea. Listening for gulls.

But he heard nothing.

 

 

“Are you sure, Captain?” the first mate asked softly, though it was not his place to. The mate was a small man, windswept raven hair tangled roughly around his face, and he was rarely anything but fierce and fiery. His hesitation gave the captain pause.

Captain Carson surveyed the pale man. There was none equal to Mr. Havok on all the seas—as a navigator, he stood unmatched. Carson kept him on as an advisor, a second-in-command, and a friend. Using the nickname anyone else would lose appendages over, Carson asked, “What is it, Davey?”

Havok flushed slightly, pleased by the subdued affection of the name. “The colors they’re flying,” Havok said briskly, wasting no more time on sentimentality. “They hail from the port you lifted me from.”

When the captain had found his first mate, Havok had been a starving mongrel on the docks, fleeing the royal guard for stealing. When the _Elder Hawk_ , Carson’s ship, had descended with its cannons blazing, Havok had taken refuge in the one place he knew the artillery would never venture: in the hold of the _Hawk_. He hadn’t for a moment considered that pirates were a worse fate than being caught. Conviction was not something the man was ever short on.

He’d been right—Carson was a ruthless pirate, but a good man. The cruelty was mostly about reputation; the ‘no survivors’ business was always something he felt a touch bad about. He didn’t mind the killing—he excelled at it and starved for a worthy opponent—but sometimes, after, he’d have the worst dreams.

In an event, instead of killing the stowaway straightaway, Carson had given the whelp a chance to prove himself. And the amateur thief had, many times over making it worth Carson’s while to spare his life.

Havok was the only man alive the captain trusted.

“Was your port particularly poor? Will their holds be worth plundering?” Carson asked brusquely. This was all that concerned him.

“I am sure the holds will be bursting with treasure and good, my Captain,” Havok conceded, head slightly bowed.

Carson let a gruff smile take his lips, putting a calloused hand to Havok’s jaw and lifting his chin. “Then why should we waver, little Davey? What is it that troubles your twisted black heart?”

His voice was gentle, mocking. Havok smiled weakly up into his captain’s icy blue eyes.

Jade Puget’s father had been a merchant, little Davey’s heart screamed. That meant Jade might be on the ship.

If Davey’s heart was twisted, Jade had twisted it. If it was black, Jade had blackened it. The wealthy merchant’s son had skin of cream, soft russet curls, the widest brown eyes Davey had ever…

Havok shook his head to purge it of nonsense. It had only been one night, and years ago at that.

“There is nothing. Give the _Hawk_ full sail. The fog will not cover us much longer and this is a quarry we don’t want to forfeit,” Havok advised tonelessly. His voice was hard, cold—not in the least brittle.

Giddy with bloodlust, the scent of the hunt full in his nostrils, the captain paid the dispassionate first mate no more heed and relayed orders to the crew. There was plundering to be done!

 

 

“Father!” the young merchant bellowed, spinning away from his place at the prow and whirling towards the cabin of the _Valor de España_. He leapt nimbly over some trailing rigging and, once he’d run a full acrobatic course to reach his father, his cheeks were barely flushed in the sea air.

The merchant, the honored Sir Taylor Puget, cast an irritated glance from his paperwork to his son. “I’m calculating tariffs, boy; speak your piece quickly,” he said, voice clipped and devoid of affection.

His son looked at his feet, momentarily uncertain. Maybe he should hold his tongue—what if he was wrong?

No. His stomach clenched with determination as cold as his father’s tone. He knew what he saw. If he were wrong, there would be hell to pay—but if he were right, hell was coming anyway.

“Father, there is a ship on the horizon.”

“Nonsense, Jade, these are deserted waters. No other trade ship knows this route. You know as well as I do this is how I made my fortune,” Sir Taylor snapped.

Jade knew a dismissal when he heard one but persisted anyway. If he had seen correctly, there was more to be feared in the waters than his father’s wrath. “Father, I have seen it. It is not a trade ship.”

Sir Taylor granted Jade another glance of annoyance. This time there was a flicker of concern. “Then it’s no trouble of ours,” he reiterated firmly.

“It may be,” Jade shot back coolly, refusing to be dismissed.

“You’re not speaking sense, Jade,” Sir Taylor said warningly. “What colors does this ship fly?”

His father still sought a reasonable explanation. Jade saw this with exasperation. These were dead waters. Only the dead and worse occupied them—and if they didn’t summon a wind to the _Valor_ ’s sails to take her swiftly from harm’s way, they would very soon be forced to choose between those grim options.

“They flew black, father,” Jade said, voice seething with urgency and frustration. Why would his father not heed his warning?

And then the screams came from above deck, and any warnings were too late.

 

 

The captain was blazing. His men were yelling, the merchants were shrieking, the wind and sea were on his face. This was his happiness.

Havok stood at his side. The ship rocked with cannon blasts. His first mate offered him a gnarled rope. “Your chariot, Captain,” he said reverently, adoration and loyalty shining in his smile. His pupils were dilated, his excitement palpable. The air around them crackled with this heightened sense of things and they were more than men.

Carson grasped the rope in his calloused hands and prepared to board the _Valor_.

Truly, he was alive.

 

 

Pirates. Filthy pirates on his ship! Jade’s ears roared with anger. He raced out of his father’s quarters, nearly bowling over the crew members scuttling below deck.

“Where are you going?” Jade bellowed, trying to call the cowards to arms. “Find weapons! We have to fight!”

They didn’t even spare him a glance. A bald-headed pirate was roaring after them, brandishing a cutlass. Panic gripped Jade and he froze, shrinking behind a barrel of goods.

“All of ye who wish to live, get yarselves inta the cabin!” the pirate hollered.

The crew members exchanged glances and seemed to agree. They put up their hands in surrender and shuffled into a line to be led by the grim-faced pirate.

Jade’s mind worked furiously. It was a trap, it had to be. The pirates would lock the crew in the cabin and they would still be there when the cannon-ridden ship buckled and collapsed to the bottom of the sea. The _Valor_ was finished and the indentured crew members were too frightened to realize it. His father, obsessed with profits, had wanted chap labor—who among them knew anything about pirates or fighting or sinking ships?

Jade made up his mind then and there, pulse reverberating in his ears, dark cotton tunic sweating tight to his skin. Everyone on the _Valor_ was going to die. But he wasn’t dead yet.

Jade tore open one of the shipping cartons in the belly of the sip, splinters from the cracked wood tearing into his tender hands. Part of his father’s latest shipment hailed from the greatest sword smith in the world. The ship was packed with priceless blades, handcrafted over the course of years for specific nobles. Jade tore away the velvet wrappings unceremoniously, discarding ill-fitting weapons into the sea water beginning to pool around his feet. He finally found a blade suited to him, light and supple, about two and a half feet long. It shone fiercely in the dim light and, made confident by the rich, bright steel, Jade was off running.

 

 

The boarding was going well. There were not many brave men on the ship; the deck was slick with sea water and only a little blood by the time most of the petrified crew had been herded into the cabin.

The captain smiled, his sword flowing fiery in his hand. The air was so clean it was almost painful to breathe.

Havok was fencing, disarming a brave deckhand with a grin. Carson smiled at the raven-haired man with distracting fondness. The rest of his men were tying up and finishing off stragglers. Soon they would secure the keep. Everything was going so well.

And then the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen sprung at him, emerging from below deck with an exquisite sword and lunging for the captain’s throat. For a moment he stared stunned into amber eyes; the slash swept past him, leaving a tiny, stinging scratch in his cheek.

Carson roared in fury, leaping back from the russet-haired whelp and hefting his own blade in time to deflect the next swing. A grin twisted the pirate’s wind-worn face. Bleeding. How long had it been since an opponent had made him bleed?

An ambush. How splendid!

 

 

Jade did not realize the pirate was toying with him. Jaw set in determination, lean muscles burning, sweat on his alabaster brow, he really believed he was doing well. Pirates, he thought to himself, were not really so tough. Maybe he could overpower them for long enough to free the crew. Maybe there was some hope for his life after all—

And, burgeoned up by this hope, his young life swelling with its own promise, he slipped. He’d been running across a slicker deck than this for years—ever since he’d reached apprentice age and his father had taken charge of his education, he’d lived on far rougher seas that these. His footing was sure. His days of falling were long past and yet—and yet. He was flat on the deck, sprawled on his backside, the deadly gleam of the pirate’s sword at his neck.

It was over. From the moment he’d seen the black sails, it had been over. So now, on his back and helpless, Jade was not frightened. Prone and disarmed, it was no more over than it had been when he was standing.

Jade did not intend to spend his last moments of life in despair.

“Your bravado has only brought your death, little one,” the pirate spoke, voice light and cultured. “I would have spared you.”

Jade glared into the single gleaming blue eye in the pirate’s chiseled face. “You lie,” he spat, mustering all of his vehemence for those two laden words.

The bald man, who now stood leering at the other’s side, flushed in outrage. His hand flew to the handle of the pistol stuffed into his wide belt. “Ye will hold yar tongue!” the red-faced pirate bellowed.

Blue eye glittering, the accused lifted a hand. “Peace, Hunter. Let the boy speak.”

Jade’s eyes blazed. “I have no words for pirates!”

The captain—for Jade reasoned he must be the captain—sneered, pressing the tip of his sword into the boy’s nubile flesh. “You’d best learn that you are not so far above us. A man you’re too good to speak to is a man indeed, when his blade’s buried in your filthy guts.” The captain’s blade flashed and slapped smartly against Jade’s cheek. He turned away from the boy, passing down the order than the offender be thrown below deck and cuffed in the brig, so that he might die first, treating the others to the bitter soliloquy of bravery’s last screams.

 

 

Jade punished his soft skin, beating his strength helplessly against the rusting metal cuffs. He was locked in the brig, chained to the bars; he had taken but a splash of pirate blood and they all would drown. So much for bravery. He had lived as he would die: a fool.

Jade did not fear death, even as water built around his ankles. There was honor in going down with a ship. No one back home—not that he cared much for the likes of them—need know he’d been chained like a beast at the time.  
Still, he was oddly proud; even the filthiest of rats jumped ship before it went down.

Or, more aptly, even the most cowardly of sheep neatly filed into their graves, not so much as lifting a finger to stop the pirate cutthroats who herded them there.

Jade readied himself to meet death. When the captain’s gruff tone interrupted his reverent conviction, he wasn’t sure which was worse.

“Why did you try to fight, little one?” the captain asked Jade softly.

Jade cracked open one eye. “Have you got a name?” he asked evenly. “We might as well speak like proper men, here at the end of all things.”

Something flashed in the captain’s thoughtful gaze. “All things? Only your life, little one. But nonetheless, I will honor a last request,” he said humbly. “I am captain of the _Hawk_ , the fine piece of shipyard scrap that caught your nimble arse against both the will of fate and the wind. I am called Adam Carson.”

Jade gave Adam a measured look. “A fine ship she must be,” he said bravely, “to catch the _Valor_. I am Jade, Sir Taylor’s son.”

“I didn’t know I’d have the pleasure of spilling noble blood,” the captain remarked pleasantly. “This day just keeps getting better. Will your father’s fleet give chase?”

Jade frowned. “It’s unlikely. He is a renowned merchant but not well loved. His prices are unfair and the men of the armada are not quick to forget the concerns of their purse strings.”

“That _is_ disappointing,” Carson mused, still light-hearted. The pirate was impressed b the man’s blithe treatment of his own death. Fearlessness, youth, and beauty—what a waste. “And you? Will you be missed?”

Jade’s eyes were deep in the pirate’s chestnut hair. He wondered how he’d missed it before. There was more than one reason his father had forced him into apprenticeship. Jade was not interested in learning the trade—he was a musician. He had already chosen his life. And if he couldn’t live it? Well, how much was his death really changing?

Jade laughed bitterly. He’d been sent to sea to avoid causing his family any further humiliation. He had been found with a village boy in his bed, a stunning raven-haired man, and that had been that. The next time the _Valor_ made berth, it had become Jade’s personal hell.

That had been three years ago.

Within five weeks, he’d been the best sailor the _Valor_ had ever seen. Within six months, he’d been doing his father’s job as well. And now he was going to die, scarcely having lived his life?

Jade’s next words were out of his mouth before he could think. “Take me with you.”

The captain was nonplussed. “Pardon?” he asked, not comprehending the request.

“I’m young, I’m brave, I’m a fast learner. I’m the best sailor on this ship and I’ve drawn the blood of the most feared pirate captain in the Spanish Main.”

“Just this morning,” Adam remarked, smiling at the flattery.

Jade didn’t pause. “I’ll learn quickly, have no life to return to, and see the murder of my father and his cowardly crew only as freedom from imprisonment. I will be loyal and serve you and your ship nobly in return for my life,” he concluded devoutly.

The brute captain grinned, looking pleased. “I don’t know about this nobility business,” he said, voice soft. He liked the boy’s spark and there was a beauty to Jade that could not be ignored. “But you do seem to be a blood traitor with no fear of death, attributes I look for in crew members. Then again, how am I to take your word, little one? I can’t let you live only to have you jump ship next port.”

“There is no life for me on land, my father saw to that. Whether I live or die by it, my choice is the sea.” Jade spoke passionately, staring hard into Carson’s one good eye. “I have no way to make you trust me, but then I care little for the trust of a pirate. Captain, I speak truly when I tell you this is the life I’m choosing, now, freely, with no blade at my throat and no pistol at my brow. Will I live by her mercy or die by her wrath?”

Adam chewed his bottom lip thoughtfully. Jade had always expected pirates to be less pragmatic. He was continually surprised by this man. For the first time, Jade dared to hope. He would enjoy serving under Carson.

He then blushed furiously at the way the thought twisted in his mind. Apparently no exile was cruel enough to purge him of his nature.

Oblivious to Jade’s train of thought, Carson was still mulling over the proposal. “The scrawniness, perhaps, could be overlooked. Your suspiciously fine breeding could be coarsened by the sea. But your aversion to land I do find suspect. Do you know the penalty of lying to the dread pirate Carson?”

“Death, sir, I’m certain,” Jade said earnestly. “Luckily I would not dream of being dishonest.” He steeled himself for his confession, breathing the stinging salt air deeply, perhaps for the last time. His next words would either bring him a death which bore no honor or grant his freedom on the seas. “The reason I am in no hurry to make berth, Captain, is simple: a few years ago, I made the grave error of choosing a male lover. My family, outraged and embarrassed, banished me to sea, where I could no longer compromise the weight of the name Puget. I am choosing only not to live in shame. I make a good sailor, as I’ve said, and am confident I can learn a living beyond my father’s shadow.”

Jade stopped, waiting for Adam’s disgust to overflow into a shot from his pistol. Instead, the pirate studied him even more intently, gone white as a clean Spanish beach.

“At last there is a way to test your truthfulness,” the captain finally said, voice low and guarded. Their eye contact did not waver. Jade hardly dared to breathe. soundlessly, the pirate unlocked the door to Jade’s cell and stepped inside. His leather boots splashed only a little in the rising water; in seconds, his face was only inches from Jade’s.

Before Jade could say a word, the pirate’s lips were pressed roughly over his. Jade gave in to the sensation immediately, kissing back with the certainty that it was his last act as a living man, that the captain’s figure was well-carved and his smile beautiful, that there was no good reason he shouldn’t give himself over entirely to the pure, senseless enjoyment of it.

When they broke apart, he was dizzy.

The pirate too was breathless. He stepped back, half-stunned. “In all my life I have never been kissed as such,” he breathed, good eye sparkling. “Your death truly would be a waste.” He paused for a moment so the disbelieving Jade could gather breath. “In wake of such a masterpiece as that, I would grant your petition to join my crew and eagerly welcome you aboard. Could a beauty and an artist so great as yourself forgive a pirate for raiding, plundering, and ultimately sinking his father’s ship, and in spite of this swear fealty?”

Jade’s entire being shone. The captain’s heady taste still filled his mouth and he licked his lower lip tentatively, unprepared for the renewed vigor with which Adam flooded his senses. He staggered slightly. A kiss like that—suddenly Jade wanted to write songs again.

“Sir,” he said, in a way that would have been coy if he’d had enough of his wits about him to manage it, “it was an honor to be plundered.”

And then, as if in a dream, he was in his Captain’s arms.  



End file.
